Cat ‘hero’ gets a new home

Hamstra said she looked into adopting the cat named Blue after reading an Oct. 21 Tribune article about its ordeal. She contacted Clarke Animal Hospital in Norton Shores, filled out pet adoption papers and made contact with Blue.

“He kind of came to me when I was there,” Hamstra said. “He hissed at most other people. He hasn’t hissed since he’s been in our home.”

Blue’s howls woke up Mark Mitchell on Aug. 28 when Mitchell’s mobile home caught fire. Those howls reportedly may have saved the man’s life.

However, in the aftermath of the fire, the cat was nowhere to be found and feared dead — according to Mitchell’s sister, Deborah Pless. But Pless and her sister, Delores Green, both of Spring Lake, kept going out to the rural property on 120th Avenue to search for the 4-year-old cat. They found him two weeks after the fire — thin and scraggly.

Neither woman could take in the animal and their brother is living with his daughters in Grand Rapids, they said. So Pless propped open the door of an old camper on the property and fed the cat there daily.

Because they feared the cat wouldn’t survive the upcoming winter, they took Blue to Clarke Animal Hospital. Green said Clark staff agreed to take in the cat and give it medical attention, and then offer it up for adoption.

“He need a good home, with no children, and quiet,” she said. “I had just recently put my two dogs down.”

Hamstra said she and her husband, Ben, live on 20 acres near Marne, with about 15 acres with an invisible fence where their yellow Lab and a German shepherd-huskie mix — both were 15 and former rescue dogs — loved to roam.

“When we put the dogs down, the house was quiet — too quiet,” Hamstra said.

While the declawed Blue hasn’t been let outside yet, Hamstra said he loves to spend his time looking out their big windows.